Often, at restaurants or other locations such as a consumer's residence, a beverage may be created on-demand from a mixture of ingredients. An advantage of dispensing beverage in this form is that the concentrate containers and water supply typically occupy significant less space than is otherwise required to store the same volume of beverage in individual containers. Moreover, this dispensing equipment likewise eliminates increased waste formed by the empty individual containers as well as additional transport costs. These and other technological advances have allowed food and beverage vendors to offer more diverse choices to consumers.
Increasingly, beverage vendors are offering reduced or zero-calorie beverages, which are often marketed as “diet” beverages. The popularity of diet beverages, however, is likely hampered due to the replacement of sugar with artificial sweeteners. Furthermore, some consumers may like one brand of diet beverages flavored with a particular sweetener, yet like a second brand flavored with an entirely different sweetener. Thus, as vendors attempt to meet the personalized needs of their consumers they risk changing the very taste profile that the consumers enjoy, and/or increased costs manufacturing and transporting multiple variations of the same branded beverage. These predicaments, as well as others, are not limited to the cola industry. Rather, consumers of rehydration beverages, such as Gatorade® have also desired more diverse offerings, leading to products such as Propel® and G2®.
To meet the consumer's needs, one option may include allowing a user to adjust one or more ingredients, such as reducing natural sugars, however, doing so could have an adverse impact on the taste profile of the beverage, even if another sweetener is added by the consumer. Although the user themselves requested the modified product, they may be unsatisfied with the final product, including having to pay for a product they do not wish to consume. Such situations could result in unhappy consumers and/or lost revenue due to consumers dumping a product before paying for it, such as at a fountain machine. Improved systems and methods relating to the dispensing of beverages would be desirable.